Spring has sprung! Well – officially, anyway. If you’re in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic states, the gusting winds, falling snow, and freezing temperatures may have made spring hard for you to recognize this year. Despite the wintry weather, we wanted to celebrate the arrival of spring here at the library – and what better way than to plant a few seeds?
Seed planting is one of my favorite activities to do with the kids because its even cheaper than it is easy – and it is really easy! Above are all the things we used in our seed planting program yesterday: plastic cups and art supplies for decorating them, potting soil, a few seed packets, and some water. So simple!
First I had the kids decorate their cups; you can give them any kind of craft supplies, but this time I decided to cut down on our scrap paper pile by giving them gently used sheets of scrapbook and construction paper to cut up and glue to their cups. You’d be amazed how many different ways they can find to decorate a plastic cup with a few pieces of paper!
While we waited for the glue to dry, we ate our snack (before getting our hands dirty with potting soil) and then the kids took turns scooping soil, choosing and adding seeds, and watering their plants. I choose Zinnia and Marigold seeds, because I read that they grow nicely in these types of containers, and we spent a few minutes talking about what the kids need to do to encourage their seeds to grow, like finding a sunny spot for it, keeping it watered without drowning it, and having patience while waiting for it to sprout. My hope is that eventually the seeds they planted will look like what they see on the seed packet, although my total inability to keep plants of my own alive probably doesn’t bode well:
Either way, it was a fun, easy activity that taught kids something (a very, very small something) about gardening! This is a very simple activity to do in your library, classroom, or at home. Does anyone out there have success stories about activities they’ve done like this? Leave them in the comments!
darbythelibrarian
librariancamille
New Brunswick Public Library Kids 